The Wedding Secret

“Uh-huh,” he agreed, humoring her, knowing if she tried to stand at the moment she’d fall flat on her pretty face. Resting his fingers beneath the bottom of her mug, he guided it toward her mouth. Her lips settled over the rim, and she took a drink and cringed, at the sweetness or the strength of the coffee, he couldn’t be sure.

“What’s your name?” he asked, figuring he’d start with simple questions and work his way up to the more difficult ones as her mind cleared.

“Jenna Chestfield…” Confusion etched her expression as she considered that name, then she shook her head, causing more of those unruly strands to spill from the top of her head and curl on the soft swells of her breasts straining the bodice of her gown. “No, we never said ‘I do’, so I guess I’m still just Jenna Phillips.”

Just Jenna Phillips. There was a story in that, Garrett was sure, one he didn’t want to get involved in, he reminded himself as his gaze drifted to her left hand. The absence of a ring on her finger backed her claim that no marriage had taken place.

She propped her chin in her palm again, as if her pretty head was getting too heavy for her shoulders to support. Her eyes grew soft, slumberous. “What’s your name?”

“Garrett,” he replied, deciding to keep things between them on a first-name basis.

“Garrett,” she repeated, her husky voice making his name sound very intimate coming from her lips. “That’s a nice, strong, respectable name. Are you respectable?”

Abrupt laughter rose in his throat, but he had the good manners to catch it before it escaped. Wanting to get his chivalrous deed over with, he asked, “Jenna, is there someone we can call to come pick you up?”

She didn’t have to think long. “No.”

He found that hard to believe. “Any family?” Remembering that she’d mentioned that her mother was deceased, he prompted, “Your father, or other relatives?”

She blinked, and an inexplicable sadness filled her eyes, a deep-rooted loneliness that struck a chord in him. “Nope,” she whispered in an aching voice. “No one.”

“How about your fiancé?” he asked. “Can we call him?”

She flinched at the mention of the man who would have become her husband, and her distress returned. He caught a wealth of regret, remorse and insecurities in her eyes before she cast her gaze downward.

“No, he wouldn’t want me anymore,” she said in a voice choked with certainty. “Not after the way I humiliated him and his family. I can’t ever go back.”

Another frustrating surge of sympathy gripped Garrett, and he valiantly tried to ignore it. He didn’t want to care about this woman and her predicament, or why she believed she was such a big disappointment to the man she’d been engaged to marry.

Great. Now what should he do? He glanced over at the bar and met Harlan’s questioning gaze. Other than the woman’s name, and learning that Jenna Phillips was seemingly as much of a loner as himself, he didn’t have much more information on her than he had when he’d first sat down.

Well, he’d done his duty. Now, it was up to Harlan to figure out what to do with the lone bride for the night. He started to ease back out of the booth, but she grabbed his arm, which immediately stopped him. Her hand was soft and very cool against his heated skin, throwing images into his mind of how supple the rest of her body might feel beneath his calloused fingers, against his lips. He inwardly cursed—had he been that long without a woman that a stranger, and someone else’s bride at that, could make him burn with a mere touch?

She’d latched on to him for security, that much was obvious. Meeting her suddenly desperate gaze, he banished those former thoughts from his mind, reminded himself he was done rescuing women, and tipped his head in inquiry.

“Are you leaving me?” Panic tinged her voice, as if she’d just realized that she was in a strange, distant town, in a rowdy, honky-tonk bar filled with men eager to take the place he was about to vacate.

“I just need to go talk to Harlan. Nobody will bother you,” he promised, feeling uncharacteristically protective toward this woman he didn’t know. Not a good sign. He wanted to say it was the same kind of paternal feeling he experienced with his daughter, but there was nothing nurturing about the awareness Jenna evoked. No, his response to her was all male and too threatening to the secure, stable life he’d built for himself and Chelsea the past six years.

And the sooner she found her way back to St. Louis and the life still waiting for her—a life certainly more sophisticated and exciting than this small, mundane town of Danby—the better off they’d all be.

He nodded toward her mug. “You finish up that coffee, all right?”

Her fingers tightened on his arm. “You’ll come back?”

He wanted to say no, but the beseeching way his damsel in distress looked at him got under his skin, made him feel things he hadn’t felt in too many years. “Yeah, I’ll come back.”

If only to help her out to a cab, or to make sure she was safe somewhere for the night, he told himself. That would be the extent of his involvement with this lost, complex bride.

“Are you out of your ever-lovin’ mind?” Garrett gaped at Harlan as he absorbed the bartender’s absurd suggestion. “I can’t take her home with me!”

“Come on, Garrett,” Harlan said, giving him a what’s-the-big-deal kind of look. “I’m sure she’ll be in a better frame of mind in the morning, and she’ll realize her mistake and go back to wherever she came from. One night, Blackwell, not a lifetime.”

One night was one night too many in Garrett’s mind—not when this runaway bride affected his libido and emotions so strongly. “Find someone else to be your scapegoat, Harlan.”

The bartender’s gaze swept the rowdy room of patrons, and returned to Garrett on a serious note. “I don’t trust anyone else.”

A vein in Garrett’s temple throbbed with frustration, and he rubbed the offending spot with his fingers. “I don’t do strays,” he bit out in a last-ditch effort to convince Harlan that he was the wrong man to take care of Jenna Phillips. The only women he ever wanted to feel any obligation toward were his daughter, his mother, and his sister, Lisa.

Harlan swiped his towel over the gleaming mahogany surface of the bar, and sighed in resignation. “Then I guess I’ll just have to call the sheriff to come and pick her up, and she’ll have to spend the night down at the station in a holding cell.”

Harlan moved away to fill a drink order, leaving Garrett with a restless unease tightening his belly. He glanced toward Jenna, who looked so bewildered and lost, and imagined this beautiful, soft-skinned, city-bred bride waking up in the morning on a narrow cot, disoriented and fearful, and without a shred of that respectability and dignity she’d wished for earlier.

Indecision warred within Garrett, and he struggled with those more gallant tendencies his mother had instilled in him. He didn’t need the responsibility of taking care of this confused female, he argued with his conscience. He didn’t need the complication of embroiling himself in her problems, he thought irritably. And he sure didn’t need the distraction of her sleeping in his house, even for a night.

During Garrett’s silent brooding, Beau Harding, a drifter who worked at the lumber mill in town, sidled up to the bar. Garrett nodded toward the other man in polite acknowledgment, but there was something about Harding Garrett didn’t like, or trust. The young man was too arrogant for his own good. A month ago he’d come by Garrett’s company, Blackwell Engineering, looking for work for the summer. Though Garrett had been considering adding on an extra man to his crew, he’d gone with his gut instinct and turned him away.

Beau cast a leer over his shoulder toward Jenna, then grinned wolfishly at Harlan as the bartender returned to their end of the bar. “Hey, Harlan, what’s up with that lovely bride over in the corner?”

“We’re just trying to figure out what to do with her,” Harlan replied, very reluctantly.

Beau’s pale gray eyes glimmered with interest. “You need someone to take her to a motel for the night?”

The innuendo in Beau’s voice was unmistakable. The mere thought of this man touching Jenna, or possibly taking advantage of her current state, made Garrett feel unexpectedly territorial.

“No,” he snapped before Harlan could respond. “She already has a place to stay.”

Harlan’s brows rose in surprise, considering how adamantly Garrett had refused any involvement with the bride only moments ago.

Beau’s insolent gaze slid to Garrett. “Just thought I’d offer my assistance,” he drawled, then sauntered away.

Garrett just bet Beau would like to assist Jenna. His temper flared like wildfire in his blood, startling him with the level of possessiveness she inspired. The last time he’d experienced such an overwhelming reaction had been over another woman. Chelsea’s mother, to be exact.

And that encounter had led to nothing but grief, heartache, and a lingering bitterness over being used and betrayed.

“I’ll go get her suitcase from the storeroom,” Harlan offered, then quickly disappeared to retrieve Jenna’s luggage, as if he feared Garrett might change his mind if he didn’t hurry.

Garrett drew a deep, calming breath. One night, he told himself, and then this bundle of trouble would be gone, out of his life and back to St. Louis where she belonged.

It could be no other way.

CHAPTER TWO

FOR the first time in six years, Garrett was taking a woman home. He found it more than ironic that the woman in question had been someone else’s intended bride, and was currently passed out on the front bench seat of his truck, her frothy, satiny wedding gown enveloping her like a shimmering cloud.

Minutes after he’d pulled out of Leisure Pointe’s parking lot, without compunction or any serious thought to what she was doing, she’d stretched out, rested her head in his lap, and promptly fell asleep. Obviously, the long day she’d had, and the Amaretto she’d consumed had finally caught up to her.

That she trusted him to take care of her unsettled him. He was a complete stranger, after all. Though he’d never take advantage of a woman, he was sure if Jenna Phillips was sober and thinking clearly she never would have left Leisure Pointe with him so willingly. But considering the way she’d chosen to drown her sorrows, she’d had little choice. And as Harlan well knew, Jenna was safer with him than Beau, or even at the local motel.